


Roses Are Cliché

by YouKnowMyMethods



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouKnowMyMethods/pseuds/YouKnowMyMethods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John Watson fails to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roses Are Cliché

John wakes with a start, the sound of a body slapping the pavement an echo in his mind. He is panting like he’s just run a marathon, thinks it’s funny the way nightmares can make your heart race, can break it in half every night for a year. He doesn’t go back to sleep, can’t after what he’s seen. It’s a ritual; this happens on almost a nightly basis. He’s sitting up now, the nightmare having jerked him into an upright position, and he decides coffee would be best. With some effort, he stands (making sure not to jostle the woman sleeping by his side), grabs his cane from where it leans against the bedside table, limp-shuffles down the stairs to the kitchen.

It hits him as he makes his coffee. A year ago today. A year since his life fell apart, since the nightmares about Afghanistan faded into white noise and new nightmares featuring tall buildings and dark figures and wind-milling arms and the slap of a body hitting the pavement took their place. A year since he has chased a criminal through London, since he has heard the violin through the walls at three in the morning, since he has opened the refrigerator to find something that is _definitely not food_. A year since Sherlock.

The beginning had been the worst, when John could hardly breathe for all of the pain in his chest, when he could do nothing but lay in bed. The first few weeks had been a blur of pain and misery. Mrs. Hudson had stayed with him, shoved food down his throat, forced him to survive. There had been visitors, he recalled, Harry and Lestrade, but they hadn’t stayed for long, hadn’t been able to watch as John became a shadow of his former self.

It had gotten better. At some point, John had decided to visit Sherlock. It had been a month since the man’s death and John hadn’t been to the cemetery yet. It had felt like a betrayal, so he had taken Mrs. Hudson (because she had asked to accompany him and John couldn’t tell her ‘no’) and gone to say everything he should have said but hadn’t. He had never understood talking to headstones before that day, hadn’t quite wrapped his mind around the reason people felt better talking to bones and rotting flesh. It was easier to say the things he should have to a plot of dirt.

He had returned to work in the middle of month three, endured the pitying stares of his colleagues and patients (especially Sarah's), tried very hard to move on. He was a soldier, godammit, and he had seen more death than he cared to admit. It shouldn’t have been so hard. A tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him that this was different, this was _Sherlock_ , and Sherlock was the exception to every rule John had ever made, every rule that anyone made, really. Sherlock was a singularity.

Before John knew it, sixth months had slipped by. Sixth months devoid of running and sending text messages to criminals and laughter at inappropriate times. He had gone down to his local pub, fully intending to drink himself into a stupor, to _forget_ , if only for a few hours. He met Mary Morstan that day and, instead of getting spectacularly drunk, had spent the evening talking, just talking. She had agreed to meet him for coffee the next day and John had felt a little piece of himself slip back into place. Dating was something John had done Before and doing it again felt more like moving on than anything else he had done.

Dates had turned into overnights and overnights into sharing a flat. John couldn’t help comparing it to his time with Sherlock. These days, 221B was clean with a previously unseen touch of femininity. The kitchen table was always clear and countertops were always safe to eat off of. The coats on the coat racks never reached the floor. The skull on the mantle had been supplanted by a vase full of flowers Mary liked to replace every few weeks (John, unable to throw it away, had hidden the skull in the back of their closet). Sometimes, he would open the fridge and break down because it was so neat, too neat. Mary never seemed to mind.

They had been married in the middle of month ten (it had been a quick engagement) and John had wondered for the entire ceremony whether Sherlock would have approved. He felt guilty, even as he kissed her and made her his ‘until death do us part’, for thinking of him, for putting her second on a day that was supposed to be theirs. It had always been that way, though, since John had met Sherlock. It was always Sherlock first, himself and everyone else second. It was that way partly because Sherlock needed it to be and partly because John did too.

A year today. John brings his coffee, black with two sugars (he takes it like Sherlock had now, a sort of tribute to his old friend; the sugars have grown on him), to his armchair. After Sherlock jumped, it had taken John months to pack his things into boxes. He hasn’t gotten rid of them, instead storing them in Sherlock’s bedroom and locking the door behind him (the room is off-limits; Mary has never been inside). He has left Sherlock’s chair in the sitting room, unable to bear the empty space it would leave behind. He sits across from the leather armchair now, trying both to remember and to forget. The latter seems impossible, the former unendurable.

It is hours before Mary wakes and pads down the stairs to stand behind his chair. She rests a hand on his shoulder, a wordless offer of support, of love. John gives her his best impression of a smile, wondering if this is how Sherlock felt all the time. He doesn’t want pity or comfort. He wants to be left alone to think. A year ago today his very best friend in the whole world jumped off of a building and took his own life. Mary pats his shoulder, the bad one, and kisses his cheek. John continues to smile. Pretending is exhausting.

He remains in his chair, not speaking, his coffee going cold. He isn’t thirsty, not really. John is tired. Mary calls him off of work, simultaneously understanding and not understanding just what he needs. He cannot find the words to tell her, so he is silent and still until she returns to the sitting room and drops into Sherlock’s chair.

Time stops and John is frozen, his muscles locking into place. There is a roaring in his ears and the world is going grey. She is sitting in his chair. Mary has invaded the last thing John has that is intrinsically Sherlock. Suddenly, he is standing, his coffee now a stain in the carpet. He is white-faced and panting again. He stares at her, can tell she is worried about him, can tell she doesn’t know what she has done. John turns and runs, leaving his cane behind, forgetting that he has a limp. He escapes, still wearing his pajamas.

Fifteen minutes later, he finds himself at Sherlock’s grave. He hasn’t been to the cemetery in almost nine months and is pleasantly surprised to find that very little has changed. There is a bouquet of roses next to the headstone (presumably from Mrs. Hudson) and John frowns. Roses are cliché. Sherlock hated cliché. He resolves to somehow gather a bouquet of fingers (toes? ears?) to lay by his grave. Sherlock would appreciate body parts more than he would ever appreciate flowers. Flowers, John knows, are impractical and Sherlock was the most practical person John has ever met. Briefly, John wonders if Sherlock is doing his experiments wherever it is he has gone.

He stands there for a long time, staring at his own reflection in the stone that bears the name of the world’s only consulting detective. Reflected-John is dull and grey, the way real-John feels he ought to look. When he gazes into the stone, the whole world is grey and it feels more real than the bright and colorful world real-John drifts through. He wishes for a moment that he could step through the stone as if it were a doorway, join the world full of gray people like himself. Perhaps they would understand him.

It isn’t long before John begins to speak. It’s different than it was the first time; there is less begging. He tells Sherlock about Mary, tells him how he isn’t sure he really loves her, tells him how he isn’t sure he is capable of love anymore. John tells Sherlock about work, about Sarah’s concern and the pitying stares he still gets from his colleagues and his patients. He tells Sherlock about his constant exhaustion, about the nightmares, the images that plague him each time he closes his eyes. He yells at Sherlock who cannot hear him because he is dead, yells at him for leaving, for not giving him an explanation, for bleeding out on the pavement while John could do nothing but watch. He yells at Sherlock for decaying under the ground, for missing his wedding, for turning him into whoever he has become now.

Eventually, he stops yelling because his throat hurts and the sun is beginning to set. John realizes he has been talking to a stone for hours and hours. He sinks to his knees in the dirt that covers Sherlock’s coffin, lies down on his back, clasps his hands together on his chest. Sherlock does the same six feet below him and John feels closer to him than he has in a year. He stares up at the sky, eyes unseeing, and finally says the thing he meant to say, but never did. The thing that Sherlock was supposed to know, but probably didn’t because emotions weren’t his area. The thing that everyone else _did_ know because everyone else understood Sherlock and John better than Sherlock and John did.

“I love you, Sherlock,” he says and means it. John loves Sherlock in a way he cannot fully comprehend. It is not romantic and it is not desperate. It is simple and it is effortless. Sherlock is so much more than a best friend and confidant. John thinks for a moment, cannot find a word. They simply _are_. 

He closes his eyes and imagines sinking into the ground, through layers of dirt and the wooden top of the coffin, sinking into Sherlock until they are a single being (Sherlock-John? Sherjohn? Johnlock?). John falls asleep and, for the first time in a year, does not dream.


End file.
